Casual Stroll to Mordor

The Battles at the Fords of the Isen are regarded as the opening conflict of the War of the Ring proper, though they were by no means the first clash among the major combatants.

The passage I have chosen to look at next is the creation myth for Middle-Earth.

Which race is the eldest? Elves love nothing more than to glory in the title of the Elder Race, Firstborn, etc. They lord it over the other races like a spoiled Kindergartener, and their self declarations hold as much authority.

For this article, I wanted to call attention to an important event which was totally removed from the movies, but should be quite important in an upcoming release for LOTRO.

This was one of the great battles of the First Age, when Turgon rescinded the leaguer of Gondolin and came forth to war as ally with the rest of the Noldor, Edain, and Dwarves.

I decided I would like to see a poster with all the major kingdoms and battles of Middle-Earth laid out on a timeline.

No more serious topic of discussion can be found in all of Tolkiendom than Balrog wings. After listening to many of the Tolkien Professor’s podcasts, and reading others thoughts, I was inspired to wade into this inflammatory topic with my own ruminations.

I thought it would be fun to sort some of the characters from the books into LOTRO Classes.

I fear that the powers of this world have promulgated a great deceit, the greatest cover-up in the history of Middle-Earth. At the center of the vast network of hoaxes are the members of the White Council: Elrond, Mithrandir, and Celeborn.

So in the end I had a chart which showed almost every important person in all of Middle-Earth history. And the lines of Arwen and Aragorn can now be traced on one chart from beginning to end. But more than that, it turned into a condensed history of Middle-Earth.

Here it is: the long-awaited (or at least long-delayed) conclusion to my series of posts on the NPC hobbits in the back room of the Bird and Baby in Michel Delving!

Way back in 2007 when LOTRO was first launched, one pretty consistent gripe from reviewers concerned the whole concept of the Minstrel class. Sure, everyone knew that the game needed a healer of some sort, but many people just didn’t get the concept of the Minstrel.

Punggo introduces the real-life counterpart of the second of these hobbits from the Bird and Baby in LOTRO, Carlo Williams.

The first time I made it into Evendim, not long after the zone opened up, I was blown away by the ruins dotting the landscape and the views across Lake Nenuial. If you have never spent any time there, you are missing out on what I think may be the most visually stunning zone in the entire game.

If you play LotRO, you have probably paid a visit to Michel Delving, the “capital” of the Shire, at some point, even if you do not play a hobbit. Maybe you needed to turn in mathoms for reputation, or perhaps you’re a member of the Cooking Guild. On the other hand, if you completed the Shire Brew-master deed, successfully finished Inn League initiation, or did the “Recovering the Lost Leaf” quest chain (available from Ronald Dwale near Dwaling), you would have gone inside the Bird and Baby Inn.